


A Year And A Day

by beaubete



Series: Here, There be Dragons [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 12:03:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6283780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond has lived with his dragon for a year now.  A long, chaste year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Year And A Day

**Author's Note:**

> This universe was originally inspired by [megaikemen's art](http://megaikemen.tumblr.com/post/137263344755/my-art-for-00q-reverse-bang-dragon-q-and-knight) for the 2015-16 00Q Reverse Bang Challenge, though I want to point out skylocked's [gorgeous art in this universe](http://skylocked.tumblr.com/post/137936703130/dragonq-and-sir-james-for-megaikemen-who-drew), too! I've loved writing Dragon!Q and all the little peeks into his culture that we get, and it was really fun to think about what marriage/mating rituals might be commonplace for him. As always (though I don't always say it), much, much love to my dear Owlsie for the beta work, even if I quibbled with you a little bit this time!

“This is—”

Q fidgets, an absolutely adorable flush spreading like jam across the bridge of his nose and up the tops of his ears.  It goes all the way to the tips of the spines there, and come to speak of it, Q’s been allowing himself to look dragon-ier and dragon-ier these months they’ve been together.  At first he’d thought it was Q feeling comfortable with him, but as he’d begun coming home to more pillows, more stacks of branches, more, well, cosiness, he’s begun to wonder—but it’s not his place to speculate.  He doesn’t yet understand everything about Q’s people, though Q’s taken time to tell him more about them as they lie abed at night—or, if he’s honest, of an afternoon when he’s tugged Q to the swelling pile of blankets and furs for a nap.

But they’ve been chaste.  Q gives the impression of a child at times, sweet and cuddling thing that he is, and Bond can’t tell how much of that is lonely youth and how much might be a genuine disinclination for desire.  It isn’t as though it matters much to Bond.  He’d stay in this little cottage whether Q ever—though he can’t deny the idea, the images in his mind of—well.  That’s the point, though, isn’t it?  They’re just images.  This is decidedly real.

“It’s,” Q says, and his fingers curl around each other nervously.  It’s.  Bond bloody knows what it is.  It’s not his place to say.  Finally, Q ekes out: “—nest?”

Which isn’t the word he’d have used for the box Q’s obviously laboured over.  It’s deftly carved, scenes of fairy stories Bond recognises from Q’s stories—true fairy stories, then—a shape with eight intricate tales.  There’s Nyssa and her enchanted peach, Venus and the mirror, Gruffudd and his clever nut-shell.  The Apple-Picker’s Horse, reared triumphant over Maisie, his ardent desire visible.  Bond tries not to snort, then settles, somber.  It looks like a cradle.  “For babies?” Bond confirms.

“For,” Q agrees reluctantly, “nestlings.”

“Are you—?  Can you even—?  We haven’t done—” Bond sputters, and the fetching pink flush washes further over Q’s face, if possible.

“No, I can’t—” Q starts, shaking his head as Bond continues.

“—any of the usual trappings for—”  

“—wouldn’t even know what to do with an egg—” Q babbles, mortified.

“—at least among my kind?  I mean, I presumed your people did things—” Bond presses forward, because if he doesn’t get this out, it’s never passing his lips again; this will be the one and only time he ever asks Q how his species—

“—mate?  I mean, if you wanted to?  Oh my flowers, just put me in the yard with the bones of dead birds where I belong.”

And Q’s flustered spluttering finally sinks in.  Bond freezes.  “You want to—?”

“I thought you might feel—I mean, it’s been a year, give or take a few weeks, and—I thought perhaps you were being patient, but perhaps it was fatherly, and—”  Q’s working himself into a true froth now, skin gone red in a way that brings the golden gleam of his freckles, almost invisible in winter, to a fetching forefront.

“Are you asking me to—” Bond asks, stunned.

“I don’t know how the lady dragons—I mean, it’s all rather less honourable and involves a lot more grabbing with tails and hauling into secluded caves, but—”  Q stops here for breath and Bond catches his anxious twitching in his arms, chuckling gently as he tutts him, one finger pressed to Q’s lips.  He stills, peering at Bond with wide eyes.

“Really?  Lady dragons are so forward?” Bond asks.  Q’s brow knits.

“When my people know, we know.”  It has the air of a parent’s answer to a persistent question; Q is solemn as any schoolboy who’s learned his teachers spoke truth.

“Know?”

“I want,” Q starts, but here he falls into one of the holes left by his abandonment: he has no tongue to speak of desire.  A child wouldn’t know it, a young man left alone could not learn it by himself, and Bond has been carefully shutting his own out in the cold beyond their snug four walls.  He’s been unkind to Q.  He traces the fine line of one of Q’s ears, right up to its spined peak, and sees it there: Q arches his throat to follow Bond’s hand, tipping his jaw like a cat to guide the petting.  Gravelly, contented purring thrums in his throat, making tender skin shiver in the firelight.  Bond strokes him, fascinated, and it’s long minutes before Q comes back to himself.

“Do you have a season for this?” Bond asks, curious, and Q shakes his head.  His blush is beginning to fade; he’s not as desperately embarrassed, but Bond fears Q’s misunderstood as he starts shuffling away, packing the nest out of sight, shoulders hunching around his ears in cold shame.  There must be a kind word he can—but he still doesn’t understand, not enough.  “Why the,” he stops himself saying  _ cradle _ , but only just, “nest, then?  If there are no eggs coming.”

Q shrugs without turning, and now his hands are jerky, hasty, his shoulders higher.  “Would you even want them if they were possible?”  And from the cringe, Q regrets saying that much.

His skin is warm where Bond slides his hands under Q’s tunic.  He’s delightfully responsive; just the light pressure of his fingertips along Q’s ribs has him shuddering.  The fire is hot tonight, and for one short, cowardly moment, Bond considers running, considers ducking through the flap to sit in the snow.  He doesn’t.  “I don’t know,” he says instead, honestly, and Q melts against him.

“I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with a bloody egg!” he declares, squeaking when Bond wriggles his fingertips against his ribs and tuts—“Language!”—as if he hadn’t taught him the word himself.  “I’m barely out of the nest!”

“Only a few hundred years,” Bond repeats playfully, as Q likes to remind him whenever he teases him about being too young.

“Precisely!” Q crows.

“Nearly a babe,” Bond continues, tickling further until his hands are creeping into the warmly furred hollows beneath Q’s arms.

“No, no!” Q protests, and at first Bond thinks it’s the tickling, until—“I’m not a child!  I’m a man grown.  Dragon.  You know what I meant.”  Bond’s fingers still to let him speak.  “I want to court you.”

But he’s soft and warm and pliable in his hands; Bond pulls him flush against his chest and Q sighs.  “I rather think you’ve already won me,” he murmurs into the hollow of Q’s throat, but Q shakes his head.

“Properly.  I mean—” he breaks off, flushing again.  “I started?  And you were receptive, and I thought—but then you never, and I got.  Shy.”

“Because you thought I might not—” Bond starts to ask, but Q’s already nodding to whichever refusal he thinks Bond is making.  “No, Q.”

“No, I—” Q agrees, pulling in his grasp.  He’s a lithe thing, slippery as an eel, and he’s almost loose and free of Bond’s grip when—“Ah!”  The little cry is sharp, surprised.  Curious.  And Bond’s sure no one’s ever—he presses a soothing kiss to the earlobe he’s nipped and Q quivers, stuck in place.

“You’ve misunderstood me,” Bond scolds him softly, his own breath still warm and damp when it comes back from Q’s skin.  “You’ll have to forgive me; I’m new to this, too.”

And Q’s all wide eyes again when Bond turns him to see his face; Q’s eyes track across Bond’s own face, trying valiantly for eye contact.  Bond wets his lips and Q swallows hard.  “I would be honoured,” Bond tells him solemnly, “to be courted by someone as lovely as you.”  

It means the world to Q, sunlight dawning over his face.  “Really?” he asks, and Bond laughs, agreeing.  He ducks his head in to steal a kiss and—

“Ow!”  There’s going to be a welt there in the center of his forehead, he’s sure, and Q looks mortified again.

“...not what you meant to do?”

“One of us has horns,” Bond scolds, rubbing at his face with delicate fingertips.  There’s already a pretty lump there; it’ll go dark and swollen soon.  Q is stroking one of the horns in question, flustered, and he can’t even stay angry; Bond laughs ruefully at himself and reaches up to pet the horn, too, to bring Q’s fingertips down and kiss them soothingly.  “I’m sorry.  I’m not upset.  It just hurt.”

“Well, I wondered why you were doing it, but,” Q says, shrugging eloquently.  

“How silly of me,” Bond says, voice dry, and Q shrugs again.  “Remind me what I was supposed to do instead?”

“Oh, no, you did it right.  I was just surprised you’d try to lock horns if you didn’t—”  Q’s eyes widen and his mouth tucks up small around—he laughs, then, almost a giggle, and bumps his forehead against Bond’s shoulder gently.  “You’re allowed to say when I’m being silly.”

“Ah, but then I’d never stop pointing it out,” Bond tells him archly.  

“What does it mean when a human does that, then?”

“What does hitting horns mean for a dragon?” Bond counters, and Q sits back thoughtfully.

“Like the thing where you hold me, I think.  When you think I’m asleep and you put your mouth on me.  Q, Q, Q, Q,” Q says, and Bond realises: kyuu, kyuu.  Kisses; he means kisses.

“Mwah, mwah, mwah,” he teases back, and when he drags Q in close, Q makes a show of squirming, his delighted grin belying his wiggly protests.  When Bond finally lands a kiss, though, Q goes slower, twisting in Bond’s grasp to direct his kisses from his hair, his cheek, his throat to his face.  He wants, Bond remembers, and Bond wants, too—Q’s skin is butter-soft and blood-warm where he trails his fingertips along the line of his jaw, up the sweet arch of a cheekbone, over the curled whorls of an ear.  His lips brush at Q’s and Q finally freezes, the move unfamiliar, intimate.  “Have you—?” he murmurs against Q’s lips, and Q shivers, shakes his head.

“My mother, when I was a nestling, but.  No.  I’ve seen—before we traveled here, there was another family like us, and we traveled with them a short way, perhaps a decade?  And in the villages, sometimes, but—” Q trails off, self-conscious again, and when he pauses, Bond brushes his mouth on Q’s.  He steals a string of kisses before Q sits back, blinking dazed.  “You keep distracting me,” Q accuses him, leaning in to tap Bond’s shoulder with his horn again.

Bond smiles at that, something warm and bubbling up from his chest so thick and sweet he can’t keep it from his face.  Q’s warm and lively against him, and when he leans in again, Q watches him with solemn, serious eyes.  His lips are.  There’s not really a word that springs to mind other than “nice”.  They’re soft, accepting, plush; he tips his face to change the angle, to get in closer, and when Q sighs against him it’s so easy to prompt them to part, to coax him with tiny, delicate presses of his mouth against the bottom, inner edge of Q’s top lip to open, to bloom for him.  Q’s lips part and Bond rewards him by kissing deeper, by pulling the tender edge of that top lip into a suckling kiss that makes Q gasp, makes his lips fall further apart, and then Q’s own tongue is out, carefully imitating Bond’s movements, sucking nervous kisses of his own along Bond’s lower lip.  

He teases Q a moment longer, pursing his mouth closer to his lip before falling back, just far enough that a cool tendril of air can wind its way between them and he can push forward again, push deeper and feel Q’s waist against his hands as he holds him still and kisses deep.  He rubs his thumbs against hot skin as he explores, and it isn’t until he feels Q arching beneath him, body straining in his grip for connection, that he realises he’s promising things he doesn’t plan on fulfilling tonight; he peers through his lashes down to where Q is surging against him, the lump of him raised and interested in what Bond has to teach him, and it’s a relief that they’re not so dissimilar.  His own cock is hard, too, a heavy reminder lying against his thigh that a year is a long time and that washing in the cold, frozen creek only helps so much, and oh, yes, he has plans to continue.  Seeing Q’s kiss-swollen mouth and love-dazed eyes, he has so many plans for more, but.

Q fights him a little as he sets him back, at first not conscious of his fighting and then with a little moue of disappointment that almost shakes Bond’s control.  He sinks back finally, pouting, chest heaving and flushed in a long line down between the laces of his tunic.  His mouth is red, so red and wet, and when his tongue darts out to taste the corner of his mouth it’s almost enough to make Bond doubt himself.  He could have him now, here, in the bed beside the fire, and they’d both enjoy it.  Q would arch and purr and gasp and moan, and—and Bond forgets a moment why not; why not?

—but then Q looks up at him with eyes the colour of a stormcloud in spring and Bond thinks of courting him, of being courted, and the decision’s easy.  In the end, they end up lying together chaste on the bed, Q squirmier than usual and Bond’s blood burning and cursing him to know it’s arousal that has his boy so twitchy.  Q is sweet in his arms as he always is, and for once Bond doesn’t wait until he’s asleep to press kisses along his hairline, where little dark curls can tickle his lips.

“Kyuu, kyuu,” Q murmurs sleepily, and Bond agrees.

::

The next morning, he wakes to Q fussing busily with the pillows on the bed, framing them around him until he’s cosy and warm.  There are more blankets piled over him, the entirety of their little bed swathed over with fabrics and furs and pillows until it feels smaller, closer, more private.  Q stretches above him, baring belly and the faintest licks of fur at his waist where his loose tunic shows the ties of his breeches and trews against the flat pale of his abdomen.  He’s got dark curls, Bond can see, and it’s a question answered that Bond’s barely dared ask himself; little golden scales glimmer on his hipbones, too, and Bond moves before his mind catches up to him: he sweeps Q up and into the bed, covering that warm, smooth expanse with kisses and whiskery nuzzles.  Q freezes in his arms, and what would have perhaps been a playful game before becomes molten honey, thick and gleaming as it stretches in the space between them.  He could—here, but Q sighs in disappointment as Bond sinks back against the bed, Q’s body still curved overhead.  Bond sighs, too, and waits until Q shuffles away to palm himself, pressing hard with the heel of his hand.  It doesn’t help.

“Lazy lie-abed,” Q tuts, bustling on the other side of the heavy draped blankets.  His voice is chipper, and when Bond lifts the edge of the blankets with a hand, he’s where he can usually be found, stirring tonight’s supper at the hearth and singing quietly to himself.  The firelight flickers at the edges of his bones, lending him that supernatural air he often lacks, for all that his horns twist wild out of the tangled curls on his head and his skin is dotted with little scales that dance shining up his cheekbones.

“I could go cut firewood?” Bond offers, and Q’s sideways glance at that is lazy, piercing.  He makes a familiar hand gesture and Bond’s brain stutters—where has he even learned that?  But it’s a thing all men learn somehow, he muses—an impish smile on his face.

“Oh?” he asks, and as he predicted, Q’s lazy sensuality cracks as he flushes, turning back to the pan.

“It’s too cold out for,” here Q pauses significantly, playfully, “chopping.  You’ll have to stay in today and keep us both warm.”  And oh, that wouldn’t be a problem at all, with the delicate curl of Q’s spine and the pretty comma at the base of it; the way he’s kneeling makes his arse gorgeous and lush, and Bond hasn’t felt this way since he was a boy himself sneaking time behind the stables to shove his hands down his trews while the knights weren’t looking.  

“Will I,” Bond hums, agreeing, and he flicks the hanging blanket closed again.  He counts slow to three, and when he parts it again to see if Q’s noticed, he’s greeted with fever-bright eyes and hands that curl like claws around the edge of the bed.  Q looks ravenous, and Bond swallows hard.

“I’m sure you’re more than capable,” Q whispers, and when Bond reaches up to pet him, his breath catches in a throaty purr.

Q’s hair is thick and warm, soft enough that Bond can bury both hands in its mass and enjoy the silk of it slipping between his fingers.  His lashes flutter as Bond strokes his head carefully, scritching along the base of one horn until his purrs are breathy, nearly moans, and he looks like he’s going to climb into the bed.  “Shall I keep you warm, then?” Bond means to tease, but his throat is dry, voice little more than a rasp; Q’s lips are wet again with biting and so, so red.  He slides with Bond’s petting, arching into his hands, and Bond lets his lips seal over Q’s with a low groan.  Half in the bed and half out, Q pushes up and in, shoving at Bond with his mouth until he has Bond flat in the bedding.  His hooded eyes are triumphant.

“I could keep you warm, instead?” he offers.  Bond’s skin prickles with delight.  Q rocks against him, strong and supple and aroused, and—

They must smell it at the same time, or else Q has smelt it first and stubbornly refused to stop his rubbing long enough to investigate.  It takes a firm hand to stop Q’s hips, and still he whines as Bond eases him off, coaxing him to the bed so he can move.  He only seems to remember their supper when Bond crouches beside the little pot to poke; steam cheers at him when Bond adds a little water to the pot to salvage Q’s cooking.  Q has the good grace to look a little abashed, though mostly he’s shameless as he flops back onto the bed with a groan.

“That’s okay, you can be the dragon suitor in this relationship, then,” Q’s voice hums from behind the blankets.  Bond chuckles.  “You can make our home cosy and provide for me and prepare for our nestlings, and I’ll be pampered and adored and lazy.”

“Oh, is that different from now?” Bond growls playfully.  Elegant fingers peek out from the bottom of the blanket to make a rude gesture.  “You’re after a spanking, sir!” he tells Q, and when he comes back to himself after the image that forms in his mind, he notices: there’s a gap in the blankets, a single glittering eye visible in the dark, like a cat hunting its prey.  He imagines that if he could see the rest of him, Q would be wiggling to prepare for attack.

“Am I?”  The tone is dangerous, the undercurrent a growl that pricks at the edges of Bond’s hindbrain and reminds him there is a reason Q’s people once struck fear in the hearts of his own.  And in all of Q’s stories about romance, there has always been this element of danger; he trusts Q wholly, implicitly, but cannot deny the thrill that chases up his spine even as it burrows into his gut.  The blankets rustle again.  “I am a fearsome, ancient beast, little man, and I could have you for supper.”  The threat is moot—Q doesn’t eat meat—but that doesn’t stop the gooseflesh that draws and puckers his skin.  He turns the food from the fire so it won’t burn and leans forward, crawling in playful supplication.

“That is true,” Bond admits.  Q watches from the dark as he inches closer to the bed on his belly.  “How remiss am I to forget it, O Great Dragon.”

The blankets flicker and Bond catches the tang and salt of sex and danger in the air; Q’s not—Bond listens until his blood thrums in his ears, but all he hears is heavy breath and his own heartbeat.  “Tell me how to please you, O Great Dragon.  What tribute?  What honour?”

The blankets flicker again; beyond them, Q is wracked with desire: eyes slits of pleasure, mouth nearly purple with biting and want.  His voice is hoarse when he speaks—“Kisses.  I want kisses.”

An easy tribute, and one Bond might have offered on his own.  He bows his head and reaches up to part the blankets, stretching until he can capture one slender limb, thin ankle and delicately arched foot in hand as he pulls it through the gap to press kisses against the warm, thin cotton at the inside of the knee.  Q is trembling, watchful, as he trails his mouth down the calf to the knob of the ankle, to the curl of the instep, to the pink flush of the toes.  He kisses the tops, the side of the ball of the foot, the pads of the toes as Q quivers above him.  Bond looks up the long line of Q’s body to his face, red and sweating, and watches as he touches just the flat of his tongue to the smallest curling digit.  Q lights up as if shocked, jerking back, and the blankets slam shut behind him, almost enough to muffle the shuddery moan.

“O Great Dragon?” Bond murmurs, voice gently teasing.  The blankets part just enough for one baleful eye to peer out.

“Stuff it.”

“Did my tribute displease my mighty lord and master?” Bond coos at the eye.  A smallish growl ekes out from the bed.

“Go cut some firewood or something, you ass,” Q grumbles.  Bond repeats his gesture from earlier and laughs at the growl he gets in return.

He spends the rest of the day tending their supper while Q naps sullenly; as they eat by the firelight and the winds howl outside, he makes a point of sucking the spices from his fingers in thanks to Q for providing supper for them.  Q flushes with pleasure.

::

It takes Bond time to decide on the perfect gift for Q, but when he does, it’s obvious—he may have given his mother’s ring to Vesper all those years ago, his father’s brooch to Madeleine as a handfasting gift, but they’re things that represented other people.  He’s got only one thing that represents him, and the thought of Q having it fills Bond’s chest with fuzzy warmth.  He only has to wait for the right moment, and that’s easy enough to find: after supper, as Q works on a secret thing by the fire, Bond’s hands go to his waist.  The leather whispers as he draws the tongue of his belt aside, and at the sound, Q turns to him.  His eyes go wide.

“James,” Q murmurs, and he forgets himself, placing knife and project to the side as he shuffles over to the bed where Bond sits working the leather of his belt from his hips.  Q reaches for a kiss and Bond grants it, pausing to take the lips so sweetly offered with his own, but when Q moves to deepen it, Bond curls his fingers over Q’s, guiding them from his waist where they’ve crept to help.

“Here,” Bond says, leading Q to sit beside him on the bed.  Q bites his lip as the belt is finally removed, but instead of his breeches, Bond’s hands go next to the buckle; he pries it from the wide leather band carefully, then looks at it.

He’s had it since he was a much younger man.  It’s the first thing he’d owned that was his, the first thing he’d earned instead of being gifted as the son of an influential laird.  It marks his name and his first true year of service, and here in the woods it is the only thing he has that is his.  It’s nothing at all to carefully press it into Q’s palm.

“I don’t have a ring for you,” he tells Q.  “I’ve never been one for ornaments; I had someone else’s ring, and I gave it to my first mate.  She left with it.  I had someone else’s brooch, and I gave it to my second mate.  She left with it.  I give you the only thing that is mine, that has ever been mine to give freely without the weight of a prior owner on it.”

“Your buckle?” Q asks, turning the finely wrought metal shield in his fingers.  He knows better, Bond knows, just as he knows what comes next: he shakes his head.

“My heart.”  It’s the fairy story answer, the right answer, of course.  Q smiles to himself as he traces the stag carved on the buckle.

Q tugs him behind the blankets into their cosy nest of a bed, and Bond goes willingly, obedient.  Q is warm under his hands, Q’s hands warm against his skin, too.  His mouth tastes like the roots Q has farmed for them, the meals Q has cooked, and beneath his fingertips are the neat stitches he watched Q use to repair his tunic.  His throat is buzzing with a happy purr when Bond nuzzles in, pressing him deeper into the protective warmth of their bed and all the blankets Q’s added.

“Have you been taking care of me, my little dragon?” Bond asks.  Q’s nod is shy.  “Proving you’ll be a good husband, that you can take care of me and our nestlings?”

Q’s mouth twists at the last word, but he nods again.  Bond catches his sigh in his mouth and kisses it back out of him.  “I want to be your mate,” Q says, sweet and pure and simple.  Bond nods, burying his face in the curve of Q’s shoulder.

“Okay.”

He mouths at Q for a long moment, drawing his mouth along miles of pale, scale-speckled skin at his throat, before Q pulls him back.  “Okay?” he asks, and Bond melts.

And there are vows for this sort of thing, at least among Bond’s people, promises to honour and obey and submit, but Q’s skin tastes like prayer as he works his tunic up and over his head, following the fine, old material with the tip of his nose and bottom lip.  Q is slender, more muscled than his shape might normally indicate; in the light cast from the fire he’s all over pink and golden pale, the knots of his nipples brown and flushed, with the thinnest scattering of dark curls that congregate not at his chest or along his fine stomach, but just above the ties at his waist like a tempting promise.  Bond’s half hard at the salt taste of his skin, and there’s just the edge of a moan in Q’s breaths as they shake their way through him, too.

He lets Q drag him up into another kiss, lets him lip at his mouth and then his jaw and then his ear until he’s writhing underneath Bond, stirred with passion he doesn’t know what to do with.  Bond knows he could take off his tunic, too, could let Q explore to his heart’s content, but temptation is a powerful master, and it’s easier to break from Q’s wondering, worshipful kisses to lick a hot line down his own palm, from the bracelets of Venus to the tip of his long Saturn finger, to skim that warm wet down across Q’s juddering belly, to—

“Ah!”  The little yelp is more satisfying than the sweet words of another lover; Q’s eyes go wide and awestruck as Bond palms him, rubs his fingers through surprisingly thick and body-hot hair.  The laces at his wrist are tight, leaving him without enough room to do more than flex his fingers alongside the length of Q’s cock, but Q surges nonetheless, wrapping both arms around his head to drag him into another kiss.  His moans are barely more than whimpers, overwhelmed and hungry.

Bond shushes him gently, presses lips to his shoulder, pushes wordlessly until Q is flat against the bed and shivering with starstruck eyes.  He gets the laces open—both sets—and peels back the corners of his breeches, of his trews, but.  But Q’s skin is so flushed, so sweet-wet with boyish sweat that leaves the stretch from navel to cock damp and curling mat of hair shining slightly.  It’s warm in the little bed, warmer still with two of them inside, surrounded by thick blankets and pelts, and yet warmer still with each press of his fingers to Q’s skin.  It takes him a long moment to realize that yes, Q is hotter to the touch, fever-hot and squirming as his arousal overtakes him.

“I don’t know—” Q starts, but of course, how could he know anything about this?  Some hidden, bestial part of Bond takes dark, selfish pleasure at the thought of teaching him; he nuzzles in close, makes soothing, petting noises.

“I’ll show you,” Bond promises, because of course he will.  Of course he will, and Q sinks against the bedding with a relieved sigh.

“Will you?” Q asks, mouth cream and fresh summer fruit even in the dead of winter.  Bond kisses him again, unsure if he could ever take his fill, but there are miles of heating skin, miles of fragrant boy, acres of kitten-soft hair to pet and explore.  He knows precisely where to start.

Q shimmers as Bond traces his fingers along his ribs, wriggling in place.  One of the pelts underneath him, it’s rabbit, and Bond rubs the soft fur up over his ribs, brushes at one of his nipples.  Q arches, the nervous energy of him exploding in a full-body wave that nearly unseats Bond from his looming perch.  He gasps, and Bond rubs the fur more firmly, draws away the tickling softness until it’s just pressure, gliding sleekness pressed against his skin.  Q’s delightfully responsive; Bond presses a kiss to the nipple, then to the other, but he has bigger goals today.

And he’d have presumed Q might remain passive, might let him control, until his whiskery kisses brush tickling against Q’s abdomen and his bucking does finally throw him off; quick as lightning and twice as dangerous, Q sits triumphant on Bond’s chest still crackling.  His cock is hard enough it must be aching.  Bond considers lipping at it through the gap in his clothes but Q’s hands wrap stern around his wrists, set them firmly overhead.  The little pat at the join where he’s crossed them—“There, there,” like to a dog—is condescending, erotic.  It’s easy to forget the wicked strength hidden coiled in Q’s bones until he does things like this: overtakes him in a playful footrace; pins him thrumming with exertion after a wrestling match; now, sits astride his chest every inch the conquering hero.

“I want to look, too,” Q says simply, and when he drags himself back along the long line of Bond’s chest and over the eager stand of his cock to settle across his thighs, Bond can’t help but agree.  

Q has no experience, though, lacks the finesse of other men Bond may have bedded.  There’s no guile to it, no coyness; he opens Bond’s breeches with quick, mercenary movements until he has his cock out.  He gets a good two, three, four strokes in, and then—Bond groans long and slow and loud at the sight: Q draws back his palm, licking the long, sturdy line of it.  He’s a creature of observation, and the slick is just about perfect when he wraps his hand around Bond’s cock again, rubbing.

Bond’s breath is caught high in his chest, tangled within his lungs.  When he chuckles, it’s twined with everything else his throat is trying to do, comes out more sigh and moan than laughter.  “That’s not looking,” he teases.  Q’s smile is sweet, amused.

“I’m looking from rather close.”

But it’s been a year, and the sight of Q—Bond’s moan goes strident, but he doesn’t dare move.  Q’s settled close against his inner thigh, rutting little circles there; it would break Bond’s heart to see him interrupted, though he’s not sure Q knows he’s doing it—Bond’s pleasure comes over him like a winter storm, white and blinding and full, with little notice and leaving him dazed, soundless in its aftermath.  He hasn’t made a good show of it.  Bond’s cheeks go hot.

“Oh.”  The little sound from Q is cracking, thunderous.  Bond’s come is splashed across his fingertips; his nose wrinkles at the taste but he licks it all away, and spent, Bond can only twitch at the sight.  Q gives a shaky sigh and squirms, but he can’t—doesn’t know how to continue.  He starts to move away, and.  Bond locks an ankle behind his back, grinds him hard against his own sated flesh until the press of Q’s soft belly sends sparks of overstimulation up behind his eyes.  Q writhes against him, but without anywhere to go, he soon finds his pace, rabbit-quick thrusts into the tender crease of Bond’s thigh where it meets his body.  Bond’s fingers search, find hidden hot places and sweet, crinkled hair to press, rub, guide; Q spills himself in desperate, hungry slides and doesn’t stop rocking until he’s rubbed most of it in.

Bond is an old man, and a human besides.  Q leaves him to lie there; they neck like teenagers until Q is hard again and Bond takes him in hand, teaches him the art of sucking cock by example.  They spend their wedding feast nibbling cold leftovers, and then he teaches Q carefully what pleasures there are to be found with hands, with judiciously applied oil, with parts he’d never considered and Bond is pleased to find are all too similar to his own.  He wakes to the curious press of slicked fingers inside his own body and whines that he’s created a monster.  Q laughs through bruised-berry lips.

Later, when Bond’s petted him into a finally sated puddle and Q lies as though poured across his shoulder, Q speaks.  His voice is small, thoughtful.  “Is that all there is to it?”

“Oh, there’s more, and more besides,” Bond promises, but Q pinches his side with clever fingers until his chest bounces with laughter.

“I mean to claiming a mate.  I want to do it the right way.  You’ve done it twice before; tell me how to make it stick.”

“I don’t know the secret to that, dear heart.  None of mine have before.”

Q’s hum at that is dissatisfied.  “Then I should restake my claim every day?”

The thought startles a laugh out of Bond, and Q digs his pointy chin into his sternum when he peers up at him, frowning.  “I very likely wouldn’t survive a claiming like this every day.  You’ll wear this old man out.”  The complement pets Q’s ego, and Bond’s fingers in his curls go a long way to help.  Q tips his head into the caress and purrs.  “Do you mean love?”  The thought’s not as terrifying as it could have been, as it would have been a year ago.

“Love?”  Q hums again.  “Yes.”

“What is love, among your people?” Bond asks.

Q pauses, wets his lips.  “When you are young, little nestling,” he recites, carefully.  “When.  When you are young, little nestling, the world is very small.  Just you, and Mummy, and Daddy, little nestling, because the whole world is there inside of you.  With every breath, you push a little more out.  Every breath contains a spark.  Breathe, little nestling—you have made a tree, just now.  A bird to sing in that tree.  Breathe, little nestling, and let the whole world out.

“And one day, you’ll meet someone in that world.  You’ll look at them and see that with every breath you put out, they have pulled it in.  The whole world will shrink, until there is no Mummy, no Daddy, no trees and no birds to sing in them.  Oh, it will be so scary, little nestling, to look around you and see that there is no world, just you and this person you have breathed into being.  But oh, little nestling, don’t be afraid.  The world isn’t gone.  You’ll know just where to find it.”

Opaque as it is, Bond understands.  Q meets his gaze steadily, and smiles.


End file.
